


To Be Alone

by cecilantro



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Everyone Else Is There Quietly, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-05-07 11:02:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14669745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cecilantro/pseuds/cecilantro
Summary: Mollymauk has never really been alone before.





	To Be Alone

**Author's Note:**

> "molly has never really been alone" is something that occured to me last night so have some Angst

Mollymauk has never really been alone before. The times that he was, he doesn’t remember them, and since the day he woke up in his own grave there’s been someone just around the corner, day or night.   
Sleeping beside Toya at night, back-to-back with Yasha when she arrived, scared, and he was the only one that could calm her down. The only one she would touch to trust her when she disappeared and came back leaking blood and tears and leaning too heavily on the longsword that the carnival had supplied her, back before she got her greatsword. The only one that could sit her down with a forceful look, stroke her hair back as she threw up god-knows-what and hold her still whilst the healers of the carnival stitched her up. Maybe he should have learned to do it himself, he never did, but he spent his time beside her. And Toya on her other side, humming gently, never trusted to touch but always loved and appreciated.   
The carnival falling apart around him is where Molly’s so-neat seams began to fray at the edges.   
But he, still, was never alone. He took Yasha with him into the new leg of life. He took Yasha, his confidence, and the things on his person when everything burnt to ash under his fingertips.   
And, well, he’s not the only one to know about that, he supposes, though he tries to avoid thinking about it. When he thinks about it, it hurts and he breaks and he won’t break. He will never, ever break. Bend and crack and wilt but never break.

  
Mollymauk has never been alone before. From the Carnival to the Nein, his solitary jaunts last hours, he knows there’s someone to come home to, someone to help him up, he doesn’t  _ know _ what loneliness is.    
He didn’t.    
Until the Nein left him here, up against a tree and dripping slowly onto the earth below now that the adrenaline is fading and his blood becomes less viscous and more like grain seeping from a slashed bag. His hand shakes over the cut, it’s deep, so fucking deep. His scimitars are too far for him to be able to cauterise it with a little radiant energy. He’s scratched at himself with his spare hand, but his nails don’t seem to light up and he’s cursing himself for it.   
It had been too quick.    
Caleb had been the target and Molly hadn’t even considered the repercussions. He saw the sickle swing for the wizard and jumped in ahead to take the blow, already disarmed, his own opponent lurching and drawing a long line down his back as Molly sprung in.   
He remembers Caleb’s face, even as the world of the present begins to blur.   
The shock and horror and  _ fuck, no _ .   
And Molly had hit the floor under a burst, an explosion of light, three beams of fire and then there’d been calm.   
“There’s more!” Jester warns, halfway up a tree, “They’re coming this way, I’m, I’m tapped out,  _ fuck _ !”   
Beau throws the last empty vial to the floor.   
“I’m out of healing potions.”   
“Me too.” Nott calls, already beginning her pattern to flank around the side of their approaching enemies, Molly groans from the floor and lifts his head from the dirt to see Caleb crouching beside him. There’s hands, Caleb turns him over and hisses.   
“Mollymauk- Mollymauk cannot fight, there’s no way. Open your mouth, Molly.” There’s a glimmer of red, and Beau’s voice carries,   
“Even with the potion?”   
“No,” Molly mumbles, tries, weakly, to push Caleb’s hands away, “You need it.”   
“If I have to blast my last spell on putting you to sleep, Mollymauk, I will.” Caleb threatens him, turns up to Beau,   
“The potion will stop him from dying, if we are lucky. You will kill me before you make him fight.”   
When the potion lowers again, Molly opens his mouth, reluctant, but resigned. Caleb  _ needs _ his spell slots.   
The potion burns on the way down, a product of alchemy to the last, but Caleb sits back with relief on his face so Molly assumes his wounds are closing over. He can’t feel  _ shit _ , he wants to fight, the adrenaline is keeping him going. Caleb’s hand on his shoulder stops him doing so, and a moment later, he feels someone picking him up.   
Yasha, of course, he hears distant shouts as Fjord, Nott, Jester, and Beau take off to meet their next band of enemies head-on and buy them time. Yasha and Caleb scour, and find a place, finally, in the roots of an old tree. They settle Molly down, sat up against the trunk, aching and limp.   
Yasha squeezes his shoulder as she stands.   
“Don’t die.”   
And she takes off, sudden and faster than he’s ever seen her move, as a horrific Beau-esque scream fills the forest and sends birds fluttering away.   
Caleb looks after her, briefly, and then back to Molly. He dips down, Molly feels him and his breath shake, an inch from him, and then Caleb kisses him, very quickly, softly.   
“Don’t die.” Is all that comes to Caleb’s mind, and then he’s gone, too, off after Yasha.

  
So Molly is alone.   
And this time, for the first time, he doesn’t know if they’ll come back for him.   
Mollymauk has never really been alone before, and now, he is.   
“After the first kiss, too.” Molly mumbles to himself, tips his head back as his vision darkens.    
He’s alone.   
He hears more screaming, this one sounds like Yasha’s Rage, he’s filled with a sense of flickering pride that’s drowned out by the pain as that begins to flow through him, too. His vision sharpens, bright, and then turns to black, and the last thing he remembers thinking is a scrambled prayer to keep his family safe.

 

“I’m bringing you back to him.” Yasha’s eyes flash with her rage, it’s so hard to focus on words when she’s so dedicated to her blade, it swings up in an arc over Caleb’s head and takes off the hand and part of the forearm of an assailant, he huffs as he presses toward her and shoots a Fire Bolt through the space the greatsword has just vacated.    
“I don’t know what you mean.”   
“Not the time for mind games, Caleb.” Yasha’s eyes skim and lock on to someone coming up behind Beau. Caleb follows her eyes and sends out another Fire Bolt. It misses, but Beau notices, and traces the path to block a blade coming for her back.   
“I am not trying to play.” Caleb says grimly, he and Yasha move in equal stride for Nott as she backs up into the shadow of a tree. He sees Yasha’s dual-colour eyes turn to him.   
“I am taking you back to Molly, even if I have to die to do it. You know why. Look out-” He ducks as she swings, there’s a garbled screech as she cleaves right through an unarmored chest, Caleb reaches up and shoves the corpse free of the blade.   
“Fall in!” Fjord calls, it carries across the clearing, and they all obey unthinkingly. Nott comes almost literally out of the woodwork and scampers, she rolls neatly under the blade of someone swinging for her and doesn’t need to look to know that the burst of light is Caleb hitting them with a Fire Bolt, disadvantaged from his spot, being carried by Yasha like a sack of potatoes.   
She drops him at their meeting point, he stands and feels Yasha at one shoulder, Jester at the other, and the latter looks at him with the closest thing to terror that he’s ever seen on her face. He puts his hand to her arm, briefly, as he pulls his hands into casting position, and her usually-cold skin is as warm as his own. She pushes her shoulder to his in return, and then there’s a blaze of gold-white light as she fires off a sacred flame.   
Beau can do nothing from so far, but they won’t let her leave the circle, Nott perches on her shoulder and fires off bolt after bolt.   
The first returned bolt misses them. Mostly. It skims past Jester’s ear and thuds heavily into Fjord’s shield, strapped still to his back as he’s busy casting. Nott doesn’t waste a second pulling it out, assessing it as still workable, and firing it out again.   
The second bolt comes for her, and Beau jerks her almost clean off of her perch as she lunges and plucks it out of mid-air, passes it up to her, and watches it sail back off. The shooter collapses.   
The third bolt hits Caleb hard.   
It hits in the softest part of his shoulder and goes all the way through, he can’t muffle the screech of agony in time, and Jester sends out a sacred flame to cover him as he blinks away the white spots bursting in his vision.   
“Pull it out.” Yasha spits to whoever is listening.   
“It could be blocking the bleeding!” Jester protests, firing off another round of radiant fire, “We can’t-”   
“He can’t cast with it in there,  _ do it now _ .”   
“I’m sorry Caleb.” Jester says, her fingers wrap around the shaft of the arrow just behind the head, and she pulls it out through his back.   
He manages to muffle that screech.   
As soon as the arrow is out, Yasha’s greatsword clunks to lean to the ground, a newly freed hand claps over the wound and she breathes, slow. A gold glow shines in her veins, and Caleb’s wound scabs up.   
“That was our last healing  _ anything _ ,” She tells them, and lifts the greatsword again, “Make it count.”

 

Molly has been fading in and out of consciousness for what feels like hours. When he comes to, he is always alone, and when he fades away, he is nothing at all. He curls himself into a ball in the hollow of the tree roots and shivers, the moonlight brings with it no heat and he hurts and he’s bleeding and he’s alone.   
And then he isn’t.   
Caleb crouches in front of him, one arm is in a sling and blood stains down his right shoulder but it’s Caleb and he’s smiling, sad and worried.   
“You are still alive.”   
Molly smiles back and passes out again, he doesn’t hear Caleb shouting for the other, he doesn’t feel the fingers that run the leaves and twigs lose of his hair, he doesn’t see the days pass as he lies, unconscious. Poison is a hard thing to shake, and even when Jester regains her spells and rids him of it magically, his body is so beaten and battered that he can’t wake up.

It’s three days later when his eyes open.  
He aches, he’s bandaged all down his torso, and his bones are stiff. He turns, creaking, his head, and finds that it’s dusk outside. And to the other side, a grinding ache, and finds Caleb asleep in a chair, half-flumped onto the bed beside him. Molly smiles, everything hurts, but he lifts his hand and settles it as lightly as possible to Caleb’s head, strokes through his hair.  
Caleb’s eyes flicker open in shock.  
“Mollymauk?”  
“Morning, love, how long have I been out?”  
Caleb nearly falls over himself as he scrambles to stand and crawl onto the bed, careful, but overjoyed, excited, he throws himself down and cuddles Molly, dry sobs. There’s a hand at his back, Caleb lifts himself to pepper Molly’s face with kisses, strokes his fingers through the greasy, curled hair that he can reach.  
“Longer than a day, then.” Molly manages between breaths of laughter.  
“Three.” Caleb says, in between quick kisses, “Three days. Jester did not know if you’d wake up, _Mollymauk_ , I’m so-”  
Molly’s hand finds a good grip at the back of Caleb’s neck and pulls him into a hard kiss to cut him off, Caleb relaxes under Molly’s touch and lets the softness of the moment draw him in again.  
“It’s okay, I’m alive.” Molly smiles when Caleb pulls up again, and then remembers the stain of blood and the sling, “You were hurt, when I last saw you. Your shoulder.”  
“Nothing more than usual.” Caleb smiles right back, “Crossbow. Thanks to Yasha-” he starts and scrambles off of the bed, “I should get the others. She’ll be worried.”  
“Caleb.” Molly calls, croaking, after him, and Caleb pauses at the door,  
“ _Ja?_ ”  
“I love you.” Molly sits back, sighing at his aches, and Caleb gives a breath of laughter.  
“I love you too.” and out of the door.  
And even though he's gone, Molly isn't alone. He never will be.


End file.
